


Double Trouble

by atamascolily



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crack Treated Seriously, Gen, Humor, Star Wars: The Last Jedi Fix-It, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:14:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28181499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atamascolily/pseuds/atamascolily
Summary: Master Skywalker warned Rey to stay away from the cave on Ahch-To. Neither of them are prepared for what she finds inside.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	Double Trouble

**Author's Note:**

> AKA my _other_ explanation for Rey's abrupt shift in character in the second half of TLJ, taken to its logical conclusion.

Master Skywalker warned her to stay away from the cave, but Rey went anyway, sneaking out at low tide to burrow through the seaweed-rimmed opening into the strange, rocky underworld below. She'd come seeking answers to the questions that burned inside her--but thousands of reflections stretching out in a glassy, mirror-like infinity wasn't what she'd expected.

On impulse, Rey snapped her fingers in slow-motion. The response trailed backwards across the line of doubles, rippling back like a pebble dropped into the ocean or the desert wind on the Jakku dunes. The one exception was the image closest to her, who grinned and gestured for Rey to approach.

Seized by the sudden, dream-like urge to obey, Rey stepped forwards towards the smiling woman who looked so much like her, yet clearly was _not_ an ordinary reflection. As other Rey stretched out a hand in welcome, Rey reached out, half-expecting to pass right through the vision into empty air--

\--only for her double to slam her fist into Rey's jaw and pitch her backwards into the rocks. 

_What--_

The last thing Rey registered was her double's wicked grin before everything went black.

***

She woke cold and shivering, curled up on the floor of the cave with the rising tide lapping at her heels. Her head throbbed, and there was dried blood on her face along with what felt like a massive bruise across her cheek where her double had struck her. There was no sign of the mirror or anything out of the ordinary. Even the looming presence of the dark side had faded.

 _It must have been a dream_ , Rey thought. _I must have fallen and hit my head and hallucinated the whole thing. Why would my double attack me?_

While she'd been unconscious underground, a storm had hit the island. Rey was immediately soaked and her teeth were chattering by the time she made her way up the steep stone steps back to the village of stone huts where she had set up camp. But the shelter she'd commandeered for her own was in ruins, all of her possessions were missing, and Master Skywalker was collapsed at the foot of the stairs, haggard and worn as he stared into the distance with obvious despair.

"Master Skywalker!" she called, running towards him. "Are you all right?"

He flinched away from her, visibly startled by her presence. "Stay back! Haven't you done enough damage already?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Rey said. "What happened? Were you attacked?"

"Don't pretend you suddenly care about me after what you did--" Master Skywalker started, only to cut himself off mid-sentence as a new thought occurred to him. "Wait. I saw you leave on the _Falcon_ a few minutes ago. When did you come back?"

The _Falcon_?

Rey craned her neck, peering down the slope to the little rocky spur at the base of the island where she and Chewbacca had parked the _Falcon_ \- the only spot wide and flat enough in this strange world to accommodate the stock light freighter. Gone. Her stomach lurched.

Maybe her vision hadn't been a dream, after all...

"You said --that was me who did this? _I_ fought you?" Rey said.

"Yes. With your lightsaber," Master Skywalker said.

"My lightsaber?" Rey repeated. She reached instinctively for the familiar weight of the weapon on her belt, knowing even as she did so that it wasn't there.

Oh. Oh, no. Definitely no dream.

"It wasn't me who attacked you," Rey said slowly. "I've been down in the cave for hours."

Master Skywalker groaned. "I told you not to!"

"It was calling to me! I wanted answers and you wouldn't give me any!" Rey said hotly. Despite being soaked to skin by the cold, driving rain, her faced burned with embarrassment and chagrin. "Let's get under cover and I'll explain," she managed.

A few minutes later, she and Master Skywalker had decamped to his own hut. Rey dried herself as best she could and held her hands in front of the glowing coals in the stone firepit at its center to warm them as she described the bizarre encounter in the cave.

Master Skywalker grew more and more annoyed as the tale progressed. "Well that explains a lot," he said at last when she had finished.

"What? Why?"

Now it was Rey's turn to stare as Master Skywalker explained.

"Oh, _no_ ," Rey moaned, burying her face in her hands. "My double attacked you and went off to turn Kylo Ren to the light? _Really_?"

"Unfortunately, yes," Master Skywalker said, shaking his head in disgust. "I should have known it wasn't the real you. The change was so sudden. Your personalities were so... different. No way my nephew is that persuasive on his own. Looks like you're stuck here with me now." 

Rey swore in six different Jakku dialects, mixing in a few random Huttese words for good measure.

"Believe me, I'm not exactly thrilled either--"

Rey ignored him, leaping to her feet as she paced back and forth in nervous agitation. "This isn't what I came here for. Somehow, I have to stop her. I can't just let her do this--"

"How are you going to do that without a ship?" Master Skywalker said. "The Force can do many amazing things, but it can't fly you all the way to wherever the hell your evil twin has run off to."

"Surely, there must be _something_ I can do," Rey said. "Kylo Ren was able to contact _me_ without actually being here--"

"Sure, there's always Force projection, but that's extremely dangerous--"

Rey stopped short, her eyes growing wide as an idea occurred to her. She turned and dashed through the doorway back into the storm.

"Oh, _no_ ," Luke Skywalker muttered as he realized what she was up to. "There's no way that thing is still space-worthy!" he called after her.

He needn't have bothered. Like her double, Rey was already too far gone to listen to him. He emerged from the hut to discover his downed X-wing hovering in mid-air as a visibly straining Rey dragged the fighter from the churning ocean with her mind. Once it was securely on solid ground, she leaped up on top of it, popped open the hatch, and somehow re-started the computer as all of the external lights lit up at once. By the time Luke had made his way down the slick stone steps after her, she was gone.

He let out a long, slow whistle. "Well, this is going to be interesting," he said at last, shaking his head as he contemplated the sky. "I'm not sure the galaxy can handle _two_ of them."


End file.
